Thursday, August 25, 2011

Beet Coconut Soup

Beets are like the perfect vegetable from outer space, and mixing them with coconut milk only further brightened up their crazy color.

Devon and I made this soup going off a recipe from the ppk, but we used regular ol' beets (not golden ones), omitted the sweetener, added a TON of lime juice, and made a half batch. Warm or chilled, it's pretty nice.

1. The hardest part of this recipe is roasting the beets, and that’s not even hard, it just takes a while. Look for beets that are somewhere between the size of a golfball and a tennis ball, so that they roast quickly and evenly.2. Preheat oven to 350 F. Wrap the scrubbed beets individually in tin foil. Place on a baking sheet and bake for about an hour, turning once about halfway through. Beets are ready when very easily pierced with a steak knife.3. Let them cool (still in the tinfoil) for about an hour. They’ll keep softening as they cool, and that is good! Place in the fridge to cool completely.4. Once cool, unwrap the beets, slide off the peel, and place in a blender or food processor. Add the coconut milk, lime juice and salt and puree until relatively smooth.5. Preheat a small pan over medium-low heat, and saute the ginger and garlic for no more than a minute, being careful not to burn. Add 1 1/2 cups vegetable broth to deglaze the pan, and turn off the heat.6. Transfer the garlic/ginger/veg broth mixture to the food processor, and puree until very smooth and velvetty. Taste for salt and seasonings, and add a tiny bit of agave or maple syrup if you’d like it a tad sweeter.7. Place in the fridge (while still in the blender) and chill for at least an hour. It should be cold all the way through. If it’s too thick, add up to another 1/2 cup vegetable broth and blend again.8. Serve topped with scallions and/or cilantro. Serves 8.

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I also recently tried to make this peach jam I saw on akshayapaatram. Crystallized ginger?! Lemon zest?! Why, yes! But the nectarines I tried to use just weren't up to the task; no amount of sugar or spices was going to fix them.